eJazzNews Archive

Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Legacy Band: Maximum Firepower (Savant, 2006)

Originally published on eJazzNews · · By Glenn Astarita · CD Reviews

In October 2006 eJazzNews published Glenn Astarita’s review of Maximum Firepower, a Savant album by drummer Louis Hayes and his Cannonball Legacy Band built on the repertoire of Cannonball and Nat Adderley. Hayes, born in Detroit in 1937, was the drummer in Cannonball Adderley’s quintet from 1959 to 1965. He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2023, and his own website listed concert dates as late as September 22, 2026.

What the 2006 review said

Astarita started from lineage: Hayes’s years with the Adderley brothers gave the project its point. He noted that Rudy Van Gelder engineered the session and credited it with a full, analog-style sound. He praised alto saxophonist Vincent Herring’s lyrical solos, noted that pianists Anthony Wonsey and Rick Germanson shared the piano chair, and described Hayes as in top form, with sharp accents and a buoyant swing that drove the band.

The review singled out the tight unison lines of Herring and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, a samba treatment of “This Here” with a brassy Pelt solo, and Pelt’s ballad “The Two of Them,” which he dedicated to Cannonball and Nat. Astarita’s verdict was that the quintet did more than recreate the past: it brought the Adderley book up to date, moving between cool restraint and hard-charging hard bop.

About the album

Savant released Maximum Firepower on August 29, 2006, credited to Louis Hayes and The Cannonball Legacy Band. Its ten tracks are “Jessica’s Birthday,” “This Here,” “Lisa,” “Little Boy with the Sad Eyes,” “The Two of Them,” “Sweet Georgia Bright,” “New Delhi,” “Sack O’ Woe,” “Autumn Leaves” and “Unit 7.” It followed Dreamin’ of Cannonball, released under the same band name by TCB, The Montreux Jazz Label, in 2001.

Who Louis Hayes is

Louis Sedell Hayes was born in Detroit on May 31, 1937. He got his first drum set from his father at ten and was taken under the wing of an older cousin, the drummer Clarence Stamps. After working in Detroit with musicians including Yusef Lateef and Curtis Fuller, he moved to New York as a teenager in 1956 to join the Horace Silver Quintet, where he stayed for three years. He joined Cannonball Adderley in 1959, then replaced Ed Thigpen in the trio of Oscar Peterson in 1965, forming a rhythm section with bassist Sam Jones. In the 1970s he co-led bands with Junior Cook and Woody Shaw and later toured with McCoy Tyner. By the early 2000s he and Vincent Herring had formed the Cannonball Legacy Band, and the NEA notes that Hayes has mentored younger players such as Jeremy Pelt. For the drummers who shaped the style before him, see our overview of jazz drummers.

What happened next

Hayes kept recording into his late 80s. He made Return of the Jazz Communicators for Smoke Sessions (2014), his Blue Note debut Serenade for Horace (2017), a tribute to Horace Silver, and three more albums for Savant: Crisis (2021), Exactly Right! (2023) and Artform Revisited (2024). The National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master in its class of 2023. His website’s 2026 itinerary included May dates in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos, June engagements at Jazz Cultural in New York and Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley in Seattle, and a September 22 date at The Pocket in New York.

Where to start listening

  • Maximum Firepower (Savant, 2006): the album reviewed here, the Adderley songbook with Herring and Pelt.
  • Serenade for Horace (Blue Note, 2017): his tribute to Horace Silver, whose quintet brought him to New York in 1956.
  • Crisis (Savant, 2021): one of the recordings the NEA lists in its Jazz Master profile.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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